Stephen de Filippo and Delong Wang | Composition Forum
FREE and Open to the Public | In Person + Zoom
Stephen de Filippo
My name is Stephen de Filippo, and I am a composer and multimedia artist from Wardandi country in the remote southwest of Australia. While my primary medium has been score-based concert music, my work has increasingly evolved to incorporate electro-acoustic elements, blending contemporary performance techniques with dense, textured soundscapes that often feature field recordings, environmental sounds, and live electronics. My music explores themes of place, displacement, love, identity, and the impermanence of existence, with a particular focus on my experiences of transience and disconnection since leaving Australia.
In 2023, I was a visiting research fellow at Harvard University’s Department of Music, supported by Harvard’s Institute of Australian Studies and the Ian Potter Cultural Trust. I studied how Australian classical music is born out of a history of cultural cringe—an inherent cultural inferiority complex felt by Australians by the nature of being a British colonial state—and how the music and biography of composer Peter Sculthorpe reflects this colonial anxiety. I was also an artist-in-residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation Center for the Arts and presented works at Harvard’s ArtLab, the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, and the Manhattan International Composers Conference.
In 2024, I composed several new works, including my first string quartet, is my love just a fraught series of momentary alignments?, and a solo violin work for Sarah Saviet titled Travelogue: Surat → Hat Yai, sul G. This work documents and aestheticizes a 1150-mile train journey through Thailand and into Malaysia, using contact microphone recordings of the train to create a drone soundscape that is analogous to the continuous drones that accompany the experience of travel. It incorporates spatialized audio and video and was released alongside an album of recordings that constitute the work.
I also premiered Spectral Breathing Apparatus, an open woodwind + electronics work at the 2024 CampGround Festival in Florida, featuring flautist Julianna Eidle. Video versions of this work, with oboist Niamh Dell, were also screened at the Resonance Film Festival (ISRL), the Performing Media Festival (Indiana), and the Center for Electro-acoustic Music Conference (RUS). Additionally, I collaborated on a scrolling-score work titled Reading Mantle Petrologywith Loadbang, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and geologist Emily Chin. My residency at Monson Arts in rural Maine allowed me to create a soundmap using ArcGIS, complemented by an EP of field recordings and an upcoming electro-acoustic work for percussion quartet.
Currently in the final year of my PhD, I am looking forward to new opportunities that will base me in the US for residence. Looking ahead to 2025, I will premiere a moment like this. . ? for bass flute, percussion, prepared piano, and scordatura violoncello at the Hear Now Festival in Los Angeles. I will also develop ZOSTERA, an interdisciplinary project blending ecological science, sound art, and community engagement in collaboration with sculptor Posey Moulton and the Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning & Transformation (COBALT). This project, centered on the conservation of Maine’s eelgrass ecosystems, will integrate community performance, sound art, and environmental education.
For more information, please visit: www.stephendefilippo.com
Delong Wang
Abstract
Contemporary music composition faces critical challenges as it seeks to align with the demands of a rapidly evolving music industry and a world increasingly shaped by technology and interdisciplinary collaboration. This talk addresses three pressing issues in institutional composition education globally: outdated curricula that fail to reflect contemporary industry needs, fragmented courses that hinder young composers from integrating diverse techniques into a cohesive creative process, and insufficient preparation for real-world demands such as working with AI tools, navigating legal protections, collaborating in teams, and releasing music.
Drawing from my compositional approach and practice, this talk aims to inspire my colleague composers to rethink how composition is taught and practiced and to bridge the gap between academic training and the multifaceted demands of the music industry today.
Bio
Born in Beijing in 1994, Delong Wang was the youngest composer whose orchestral works were officially selected to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China and has composed extensively for both concert music and film scores, in addition to commissions from the Five Partners Foundation, Ulysses Quartet, Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra and the Central Conservatory’s Traditional Orchestra. Wang is one of the few young Asian composers to achieve success in both film music and concert music.
The film Manifesto, produced by Shanghai Film Group and directed by HOU Yong, for which Wang served as music director and composer, won three awards at the Tokyo International Film Festival, with its soundtrack published by Universal Music. Other films scored by Wang have been acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival and the Pingyao International Film Festival.
Prolific in orchestral music, Wang collaborates frequently with internationally renowned orchestras. His music has been invited to Manchester International Festival of Modern Music, Juilliard’s Focus Festival, and Verbier Festival. The Central Conservatory of Music Press and Shanghai Conservatory of Music Press publish his orchestral and choral works. From 2022, Wang expanded his artistic exploration into cross-modal multimedia, including virtual reality compositions that premiered at the Qualcomm Institute, reflects his continuous exploration of innovative artistic forms that technology can bring to music composition.
